Highlights

DJ Hennessy Frontman released this dope mixx back in April, but seven months later, it still feels as current as the day it was released. A 30-minutes plus mix of soft rock, coffeehouse pop, and dancehall horns, “CVS Bangers” is described by its creator as:

-“The audioscape for when you’re buying tampons or a 12 pack of condoms”
-“A sampling of those magic tunes that play when you’re contemplating how ridiculous you would look carrying 24 rolls of toilet paper on the train”
-“Those bittersweet tunes of yesteryear that skip through your mind as you read the nutritional information on the back of a box of frozen pizza and opt for a pint of ice cream instead “
-“Those special ditties that accompany your smashing the bar code of a can of Red Bull against the scanner of a broken self-checkout machine”

Fun fact about yr girl zcamp: I actually worked at CVS for one fateful summer, and it will be with me for the rest of my life because I acquired many skills (brandishing box cutters, stocking nail polish by color, shooing teenagers away from the cough syrup). This mix provokes a strong Proustian flashback to those glory days, probably a direct result of my listening to muzak for eight hours a day, every day, for three months. But you know, muzak is the soundtrack of capitalism, and it is my duty as an American to support capitalism, no matter what.

Not long ago, as Dirty Tapes first started making a name for themselves through pop-up posts and embeds across the [semi-]permanent threads of the internet, the label boasted an enormous list of upcoming releases — something like 20-tapes deep. It felt like a real statement. “Dirty Tapes: get ready.” Well, that list disappeared into the data stream somewhere, and the current list is much more representative of the releases actually available to us, as the label currently stands. Of that initial list , this long-awaited BUN / Delofi split is finally seeing its physical release. Its mid-range beat highlights are perfectly and barely audible through the piles of tape hiss and vinyl crackle. “Dirty” Tapes is right!

Listen to a couple of the tracks below and buy the full tape over at the label’s website.

Pop music has never been this serene since Michael circa Free Willy. E+E (Elijah Paul Crampton) is now here to propose that same feel, but reimagined on RECORTES [2008-2012]. Basically, RECORTES [2008-2012] (translation: Cuts) takes everything you wanted in pop and flips ya, for real. Like, he got birds and bells both signaling off in the middle of songs that sound all at once daring, bold, and fluid. It’s non-stop and can be played as such. Too much musical and/or verbal weird worlds in your years? Satiate that pain and ease into E+E’s RECORTES [2008-2012]. I got a mini-exclusive bit from Elijah about how this release came to be, and the words exactly match the songs’ adventures and poignancy. Read about it in the block quote and stream RECORTES [2008-2012] below:

These works sum up a time in my life spent moving through the United States, a time abounding with pure romanticism and sorrow. Back then, I was engulfed in the flames of such poets as Saint John of the Cross, Paz, and of course my beloved Jimenez. These songs were quite literally love letters written to different boyfriends and to God. Not originally intended for any form of public gaze, they laid with my secrets. They stood ash-dusted as a testament to a violent reclaiming of my past and their posture remains in that light. Their formation came wholly at times, flung out and blasted into being; in other moments they seemed to materialize shadowy and scarcely existing. From their inception these songs have remained in motion, in constant arrival. May you find solace in these crude constellations. May you find yourself dragged down into love’s orbit, removed- however momentary- from the abysm of your freedom, pulled out by a great weight of wings.”

When Ze Records put out their Mutant Disco compilation, they subtitled it A Subtle Discolation of the Norm. Xosar’s green-neon-bathed, eerie, retrofuturistic mutanthouse is not so much a discolation as an edification — and a subtle Detroitification — of the norm; a panicky dystopia where we can only be soothed to sleep by android lullabies, or by the distant crashing waves of the sea(punk). This may not be surprising, springing from the mind of an artist who’s a genuine heir to the Cold Mountain Paranormal Society.

L.A. duo 18+ are one of the most exciting groups out there. Their music is a bizarre yet seductive mix of hip-hop, electro-pop, trap, and appropriation music, a hyperextended reach into the repressed, insular fetishism of the virtual world, where simulacrum reigns and orgasms occur from a sweaty, distanced position. Their vocals, alternating between members “Boy” and “Sis,” mirror in part the artificiality of its video subjects — vacant, mimetic, questionably sincere — all of it fraught with the terrifying (digital) reality that reproduction in 18+’s domain is programmed, not biological.

Last month, 18+ released their third (and, in my opinion, strongest) release, MIXTAP3. It follows MIXTA2E from late last year, which made our mid-year list with ease several months ago. To continue the celebration that started this morning with Birkut’s review of their latest, I made an 18+ mix called MIXTA3.5, which culls my favorite tracks from both MIXTA2E and MIXTAP3, as well as a host of tracks so fucking good it’s hard to believe they haven’t been released outside of YouTube.